I recently did my first repaints and wanted to share them here. I hope documenting my efforts proves entertaining to a few members, and perhaps useful to some fellow newbies.

I'd been reading up on miniature painting for some time and was inspired to try a blue TIE Fighter via this post by ImperialBucketHead . It looked like a pretty easy first repaint and I really like the deeper color for the TIE.

So armed with a bottle of Drakenhof Nightshade and a couple of brushes from my local craft store, I went to work. Things seemed to go pretty well at first, working slowly with thin coats, building up the blue on the fuselage. But I found it difficult to paint the spars of the solar panels cleanly, especially over multiple passes. The color got away from me too, seeming to go from lighter than I wanted to too dark very suddenly. Lessons learned: work more slowly, and keep practicing detail work. I'm not too unhappy with the TIE for a first try:

Next I wanted to try something that might prove even easier. Looking through pilot cards I decided that the drab gray Bandit Squadron Z-95 would be right up my alley.

A thin coat of gray obscured the blue markings and darkened the hull. A couple of light washes with a simple gray wash added some depth and a grimy, well-worn look. A touch of yellow on the nose cone and a blackening of the missiles in the launchers finished up the details. I'll get a metallic bronze or gold to repaint the cockpit as pictured on the card (Bandit on left):

Happy with the Headhunter, I decided to try out a Blue Squadron B-Wing. First I tried a phthalo blue wash over the entire ship: the ship as pictured on the card seems to have a subtle blue cast to me, and I thought it would give it more character than just repainting the stripes.

The wash didn't apply as evenly as I expected (obvious in hindsight), but so far everyone who's seen it seems to like it. It appears a little less blotchy in person. The cyan I used for the stripes is too bright in my opinion, and I got a little sloppy again. A mixture of blue and gray wash toned the color down a bit, but it's still too bold for my taste and I think I'll strip it and try again with a more subdued blue:

I looked for another really simple project that I could knock out quickly and decided to try a Gray Squadron Y-Wing. The Y-Wing is probably the ship with the worst paint job IMO. Covering the yellow with gray seemed pretty easy, and it was good practice, but I wasn't too impressed with the results. Lesson here was to spend more time planning. I think I'll try again by basecoating the entire model and adding more detail, and a wash less aggressive than stock. I put some tiny blue accents on the astromech to try to add something different:

My fifth and most recent repaint is a Tala Squadron Z-95 (below right). So far this is the one I'm happiest with. It's less sloppy than the others and I like the color scheme. I tried an orange engine glow but I think I'm happier with the red engine glow on the Bandit.

I enjoyed working on these: I put on Netflix and took my time (after the first one). Like any mechanical/motor skill there's a learning curve, but having done some research saved me from making even worse mistakes. Jay Adan's YouTube channel is one of many good starting points.

Just a word of encouragement to prospective painters: I've seen a lot of people comment that they wish they had the artistic talent to do repaints. I've got no painting experience, or any other artistic experience, prior to this. If you can read, hold a brush, not get discouraged by some less than perfect results, and learn by doing, I think you can successfully paint miniatures.

I'm really looking forward to using these in play, and to doing more painting. More photos and higher resolutions can be found here . Id be grateful for your feedback/suggestions.

Those all look really good. Simple colours done really well is always the best way to repaint ships. You say you have no painting experience but I don't think you need it if they come up looking like that. Top notch.

Nice going for your first attempts at repaints. I think the Z-95's look awesome. Well done so far.

They look great man! You did a bang up job on your first run, keep up the good work!

Thanks for the feedback guys, I'm working on another blue TIE and a Knave Squadron E-Wing. Should be posting more pics soon.

For my second batch of repaints I tried another TESB/RotJ Blue TIE using the Drakenhof Blue wash and I think the results were much better. I used even lighter coats, about as light as possible, and found the third coat gave me a blue I was happy with. Compare the new one on the left with my first attempt on the right.

My next job was a Knave Squadron E-Wing. A yellow nose cone and few coats of a simple gray wash were all it took to get a pretty good match to the card artwork for Corran, Etahn, and Knave Pilot.

The artwork for Etahn's snubfighter has a pretty cool engine glow effect. I've been experimenting with different options and thought this would be a good one to try. The macro shot really highlights the imperfections and intentional spillover of the red, but i think it looks better IRL, especially on the board—it brings the model to life.

I'm nearly finished with Royal Guard repaints of a Defender and a Lambda; I'm expecting to have photos of those in a few days.

That engine glow? It's very good.

Nice work!

For my second batch of repaints I tried another TESB/RotJ Blue TIE using the Drakenhof Blue wash and I think the results were much better. I used even lighter coats, about as light as possible, and found the third coat gave me a blue I was happy with. Compare the new one on the left with my first attempt on the right.

This looks very nice, what company makes that wash you used. I'm thinking of doing this with an Advanced and maybe a couple TIEs, or even an Interceptor.

For my second batch of repaints I tried another TESB/RotJ Blue TIE using the Drakenhof Blue wash and I think the results were much better. I used even lighter coats, about as light as possible, and found the third coat gave me a blue I was happy with. Compare the new one on the left with my first attempt on the right.

This looks very nice, what company makes that wash you used. I'm thinking of doing this with an Advanced and maybe a couple TIEs, or even an Interceptor.

Light wash of GW nuln oil was would work just don't let it pool in any recedes or it has this odd tendency to crystallize white it's the only wash I've ever seen do it.

This looks very nice, what company makes that wash you used. I'm thinking of doing this with an Advanced and maybe a couple TIEs, or even an Interceptor.

Awesome thanks, I'll look for it.

Jebus, I keep hearing abuot this Nuln oil, I may have to get some and experiment.

Awesome thanks, I'll look for it.

Jebus, I keep hearing abuot this Nuln oil, I may have to get some and experiment.

It's a black wash that's good for shading details and toning down colours without overwhelming them, the new paint range Gw did is quite good where washes are concerned the actual paints you can get cheaper elsewhere.

I completed my Royal Guard Defender last week. A few tiny imperfections showed up really clearly in the macro shots, so I touched it up a bit and reshot. Stock Defender and stock Royal Guard Interceptor shown for comparison.

As the Empire's elite fighter I thought a Defender was a pretty logical ship to be used by the Royal Guard. I used the detail from the Interceptor as a guide: white-gray details and gray cannons. I was able to duplicate the red color pretty closely using a combination of Alizarin Crimson and primary magenta.

I also completed a Firespray done in an Imperial gray color scheme. The lore says that only a handful of prototypes were made, and there are no pilot cards for a truly 'Imperial' version, but it's something I've rarely seen done that I thought would be interesting: to envision the ship as the prisoner transport it was originally intended to be.

The light gray coat over the flared red section didn't cover as well as I'd hoped, even after several coats. Next time I would start with a darker gray base, lightening it with subsequent coats. I was reasonably successful at evening out the 'wear' on the primary hull before going over with a blue-gray, but my technique here could be improved imo. Not as clean as I would have liked: next time I would use a larger brush. I gave the ship some detail to make it look a little newer or better maintained. Brightened the warning orange on the wings as well as the yellow details. The gray wash wasn't exceptional and I'd try a black next time.

I wanted to try an engine glow to match the movies, with the top engine burning hotter/whiter, and a fiery orange glow. The orange could be better, but it was good practice. An airbrush would produce superior results. I did a little touch-up and washing of some of the rear details, which may not be obvious because the one I left stock has a noticeably better paintjob. I'm fairly happy with the results on this one: it's a bit drab, and I'd maybe add some black panels along with the darker wash, but at the end of the day I like the cleaner, more Imperial Firespray. I'll definitely tackle the other bounty hunter paint jobs when I can get my hands on more Firesprays.

I'm pretty much finished with the promised Royal Guard Shuttle, but I thought the gray wash I've been using wouldn't work well for it. I've seen some excellent results from Nuln Oil (discussed above), so I got a pot of that and should be putting the finishing touches on the shuttle very soon. I don't know if a Royal Guard Shuttle makes sense in the fluff, but it seemed like it would look really cool in red and I'm excited about the results so far.

I've got a handful of other repaints in various stages of completion: will post another update before long!